


Circuit

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:36:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a missing scene for my previous (now very AU) 3x16 tag <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/348940">Always Come Back</a>. Which should probably be read first, in order for this to make any sense at all! For purposes of this story, pretend season four never happened. Written for run_the_con for the prompt "from the very beginning".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circuit

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Цепь](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3577914) by [aqwt101](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqwt101/pseuds/aqwt101)
  * Inspired by [Always Come Back](https://archiveofourown.org/works/348940) by [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio). 



They only let family into the ICU, which means there's just one thing to do: what Neal does best. Ten minutes and one visit to the hospital laundry later, he's breezing in as a brand-new surgical resident, smiling at the duty nurse, and looking for Elizabeth.

(The thought occurs to him much later that he could probably have had the nurse call Elizabeth and go in with her, but telling the truth has never been his first instinct.)

He's doing just fine right up until he sees Elizabeth. Up to that point, it's just another con, and he's smooth and glib and swimming in his element like a fish in water ...

... and then she turns around from the coffee machine and sees him, and it's like the last few months fall away and he falls back _into_ the person he used to be. He staggers as it hits him -- everything he hasn't been thinking about. The way he misses New York constantly, like an ache under the skin. The way that he and Peter used to bounce ideas back and forth in a constant cycling of creative energy that he'd only every experienced on the very best cons. Evenings at the Burkes', in a pool of lamplight when he almost felt like part of something, in a way he never had before ...

"You came," Elizabeth breathes, and she falls desperately into his arms. Neal hugs her, taken off guard by his own reaction and by hers.

When she finally pulls away, he realizes that he's never seen her like this, not even after Keller kidnapped her -- so open and exhausted and hurt. She's not wearing any makeup to cover the pallor of stress and sleeplessness. Her hair, unbrushed, is knotted roughly with an elastic band; frazzled strands escape around her face. She's still beautiful, but he also aches for her, that she's been dealing with this on her own. When he grips her shoulders, he can feel how much of her weight he's supporting. She's nearly dead on her feet.

"Go home," he says gently.

"But you just got here." She still has her hands on him, as if she can't believe he's real.

"I'll still be here in the morning." And, though he doesn't want to say it, he wouldn't be able to answer any of her questions anyway -- for her sake, and his own. "Go home, eat something, sleep. Take a good, solid twelve hours. I'll sit with Peter."

She looks him up and down, noticing Neal's white coat, fake name tag and the stethoscope around his neck. A glimmer of her old sense of mischief dances in her eyes. "You have to tell me what Peter says when he realizes you're impersonating a doctor."

Something in Neal breaks just a little at that, sagging in relief, not unlike the way that Elizabeth had sagged into his embrace. "He's awake?"

"He's been in and out." She goes evasive, looking down; her lips quiver.

"Hey," Neal says, and tilts her face up to look at him. "It'll be all right." He says it not because it's true, but because it's what she needs to hear -- and it's what Peter would have said if he were here. If he wasn't the reason for all of this.

She nods, and sudden tears spring into her eyes. She throws her arms around Neal again, hugging him hard. "He's in 22B," she says. "I'll be back in the morning -- Neal --" and he knows the reason for the fear in her voice. The last time, he left without saying goodbye.

"I'll see you in the morning," he promises, and she nods, and turns towards the nurse's station.

Neal takes a moment to pull himself together, and then goes to see Peter.

It's not unlike the time that Mozzie was in the hospital. The smells are the same: chemicals and disinfectant and an underlying hint of something that he can't identify and doesn't want to. There are the same sounds of beeping machines and, in the background, the hospital's hushed nightlife.

And Peter ...

Peter is white, and still, and so very un-Peter that it almost undoes Neal all over again. Seeing Elizabeth brought home to him that he's really here, but seeing Peter makes him realize what leaving cost him.

He tries not to think that it's his fault, because it isn't and he knows it. And yet there's a part of him that thinks _I should have been here, I should have stopped this from happening._

_I should have taken that bullet for you._

"I would have, you know," he says aloud, so softly that even if Peter were awake, he couldn't have heard over the low-pitched beeps of the heart monitor.

Neal lays his hand over Peter's cold, dry one, and curls his fingers around Peter's. "El's gone home to get some sleep," he explains to Peter's still face, to the closed, bruised-looking eyelids. "I told her I'd stay. So here I am --"

He hushes quickly at the sound of a nurse entering to check on the patient next to Peter. Her shape moves behind the curtain. Neal mentally prepares a brisk explanation of what he's doing here, but she leaves again without looking behind the curtain.

Visiting Mozzie in the hospital was definitely easier. This is going to be a very long night.

"The things I do for you," Neal tells Peter. He reaches down to brush a lock of hair away from Peter's forehead, but his hand lingers, the fingers spanning Peter's forehead and braced against the slack cheek, as if he can trap all that makes Peter _Peter_ \-- Peter's heart and intelligence and loyalty -- in the palm of his hand. 

And, here in the privacy of the dim space behind the curtain, Neal's eyes prickle with tears. All the walls that he threw into place to protect himself when he left New York are crumbling, and it's a tide of loneliness and loss and love and regret that fills him now, taking him back, back, to the person he used to be. To Peter waiting for him outside the prison in the winter sunshine, to the unfamiliar weight of the anklet and the first tentative click of something infinitely more fragile and precious than prison bars locking into place. To the past two and a half years, and all the heartbreak and the cons and the cases, and the things he's learned about himself between there and here.

"I missed you," he whispers into a silence broken only by the beeping machines and the soft, dry sound of Peter's breathing. He grounds himself, one hand curled around Peter's hand and his other on Peter's face -- as if the two of them are a circuit, and it's whole and complete for the first time in eight months. "I missed you all. So much."


End file.
